Rural Life

Another new critter in the zone - cynips!

Today's Courrier de l'Ouest had as its main story dire warnings about a new critter, not native to Europe that is decimating sweet chestnut plantations in France.  Big news guys - the wee varmint has been here for a year or two, and specifically in the One Acre Wood.

Last spring we spotted galls on some of the low branches of some of the young sweet chestnut stems, and wondered what it was about.  Now we know - Cynips de Chataignier - or Dryocosmus Kuriphilus - or Chestnut Gall Wasp.

Self-fertile (nasty) wasps lay eggs in next year's leaf buds in the summer.  The following spring, the eggs hatch in the bud and create a gall in which they live and feed and grow.  They hatch out in late spring/early summer and fly around laying more eggs.  The effect on sweet chestnut trees is to reduce fruiting drastically - by up to 70% some claim - as well as sapping the strength of the branch their gall is on, and in the long term, reducing the strength of the tree.

It is a notifiable pest, so that is today's job, finding and reporting it to the relevant authority and waiting to hear what happens next. 

If you spot galls on sweet chestnut trees, check them against this website/document and then contact your local authority with responsibility for control of foreign pests.

The Power of Trees

When we went to the One Acre Wood last Saturday, we found some horrible little Urk had smashed down one of the entrance posts and made off with the really dilapidated wheelbarrow we keep there to move large lumps of wood about.  We were a bit upset and put in a new entrance post.  Next day we went back in the rain and removed the rest of the firewood that was in the covered stack, as we knew cold weather was on its way.

Before we left, we talked to the trees and in particular the King of the Forest and his nearby hench-tree, who has a large dead branch that we keep meaning to cut off.  We asked them to redouble their efforts to keep the wood safe, and gave the hench-tree permission to drop the branch on any invaders, with promises of liquid libations and fish, blood and bone meal if he caught said horrible little Urk.

Today in the paper, we read that a man of 62 was hit by a tree branch yesterday while doing his firewood in the woods at Les Vaux in Chevire le Rouge, and has had to be hospitalised.  Guess where the One Acre Wood is?  We are waiting for a call from the Police about our stolen wheelbarrow, as it had our phone number and stolen from spray painted all over it.  We will need to go and check the damage soon, and see if I need to buy fish, blood and bone meal.....

In homage to our trees, here is the King of the Forest in his spring leaves.

 

Watching the weather

I think I was scarred mentally by the awful summer we had here in 2007, when we had no days with temperatures over 30 degrees (normally we reckon on about 10 per year), so much rain it wasn't true until September when the wild mushrooms should have flourished at which point it stopped raining for 5 months, and the general unremitting murk.  If I am promised fine weather and it doesn't happen, I start to sulk.

For the past five days the chaps at Meteo France have been promising a mini-heatwave starting today, Wednesday.  You can imagine how unimpressed we all were - including cats - when this morning was dull and overcast and indeed it rained for a bit once we got back from the market.  Harrumphes came from the garage, as it doubled as John's workshop, while he built a ramp for getting his mower into the van more easily, along with libellous statements about weather forecasters that I would not contemplate repeating.  However as I was rather optimistically starting to put the laundry on the line, I noticed the sky was changing colour over the church, from an ominous dull lilac to proper turquoise blue.  In the few minutes that it took me to find a camera, the blue had won half the sky, and as I type, the sun is beating down on the garden from a cloudless sky.  The change took 10 minutes in all.  Here is the transition line!

 

The latest chicken news (apart from about 120 visits to the blog site over the past week for information on broody chickens - other sites are available for this and may be more knowledgeable) is that feckless Joel has got another two including one that I call Billy, but I am sure should have a much more dignified name like Chanticleer.  He is a bit camera shy at the moment, but he is truly magnificent (when he hasn't been rained on for 24 hours non-stop), you get the idea from this.  When I can persuade him to do a more formal sitting, there will be a better picture.

The bad weather hasn't really helped the cherries that much although they have plumped up a bit, but the sun will now get them turning nearly black - unless the blackbirds get there first.  They are also getting sweeter, and our chickens still think they are fabulous!  Chicken faces will  turn black with cherry juice over the next three weeks - not the prettiest sight and one that lasts a surprisingly long time.  Again I will try to document the phenomenon.

 

Catching up on things here

Life has been a bit hectic recently, hence the dearth of posts, and the lack of nice photos for this one too.  Looking at the statistics for hits on this blog, it would appear that others have been busy too, with broody chickens the main area of concern.  Last week there were 42 searches for advice on broody chickens - get a grip folks.

Herewith my final wisdom on broody chickens:

• Spell broody correctly! It is broody, not broddy, or other permutations.
• It happens and it is natural, and yes it is a bit of a pain, particularly if you only have one or two chickens, but it is a bit like saying to women don't do the PMT/curse thing. There are ways around it - ISA browns do not seem to go broody particularly, but I find them rather boring chickens and they fall apart quickly (see this post on my thoughts on this type of chicken).
• Some people find broodies useful if they have fertile eggs and can't be bothered with an incubator - ask around among your local chicken fraternity.
• Look after your broody - she will neglect herself a bit.
• My way round it? Once the others have laid for the day, take broody out of the coop and lock it until just before dusk - it saves between a week and 24 hours on the normal brooding time.

On a slightly different note, we do tend to use a period of broodiness from one chicken to introduce new birds to the flock as then you don't get two chickens picking on the new bird(s) at the same time.  This comes to mind as rather sadly our Speckled Hen (imaginatively known as Spot) succumbed to sudden chicken death.  For about 24 hours beforehand she was a bit depressed - but I don't go in for chicken psychiatry, so I told her to pull herself together.  Sadly she just keeled over in the evening and I found her dead the following morning - the other two were unconcerned but hungry, and have shown no other symptoms, so we have bought a replacement, or rather two replacements - another Light Sussex type and another Black one.  Black is brooding, so only White is bullying the two newbies (Salt and Pepper - many thanks Dick Willis for the names).

On other fronts, the peas I procrastinated about are up and starting to flower, while the cherries are fattening up and starting to turn colour.  Fortunately they are not too red as we are forecast rain in the next week and rain and ripe cherries means exploding and split cherries.  Nice for chickens and a pain for us.  The aubergines and pepper plants are in, as are the first batch of tomato plants and now I need to concentrate on courgettes, chillies, pumpkins and sweet corn.  The iris I hoped/thought would be jet black turned out to be maroon - very handsome, but I must find some black ones.

Next post will have photos - promise!

The promise of February

January is always a hard month round here - it is either wet or cold, and despite the seemingly endless rounds of galettes, the mornings are dark (the sun doesn't rise until about 8:30 or later) and there is a never ending trail of dirty cat paw prints around the house.

With February, it is a bit more mixed.  The weather is mainly still either wet or cold (or as today, both with a snow storm all day though nothing settled), but there are odd days of warmth and promise.  At the weekend we did a load of pruning and preparing raised beds for this year's crops.  For the past 6 days I have been doing a daily count of broad bean shoots appearing in one bed (the seeds were planted in early December), and can finally identify 3 snow drops starting to emerge around the quince tree.  But yesterday the cloud rolled back, and while I have still done the daily count (up to 21 out of 100 sown), it has been done more quickly so I can get back into the warmth.

The chickens are starting to eat more as the days lengthen and we are still getting between 1 and 2 eggs a day from them, which is impressive.  They were not so keen on playing in the snow however, and were sulking when I led them back to their run.

The cats don't know how to cope.  They played outside for about 8 hours non-stop on Saturday in the sun, and then on Sunday were not inclined to do much as they had overdone it the day before.  Today, between the three of them, 100 minutes have been spent outside - and none of them are three years old yet, they've just gone soft!

We know that longer days and better weather are on the way however.  The weekend gave us a hint of the weather, it is nearly 6pm here now and it is not yet dark, and the other sign of spring has also started to appear.  Second home owners are starting to drift over to stock up on essentials, see how their property has survived the winter and find out the gossip from the winter and make plans for later in the year.  It is lovely to see people again, and to be reminded how lucky we are to be here all the time!

Firewood

Happy New Year - or as we say here Meilleurs Voeux, et pour la sante surtout!  Of course in the current glacial climate, while health is very important, staying warm is totally fundamental.

For Christmas, John got a book on native British trees and their uses, including a section on how to deal with firewood and make a fire that will light first time.  It is extraordinary the difference between the opinions in the book, based around we assume a Middle England experience, and what we find here, in a middle but westerly France.  I guess the distance between is about 500 miles, but is enough to affect how trees grow, and therefore the properties of the wood.

Neither the author nor we would disagree with oak making a fine firewood if you don't have any other uses for it, but we do disagree about chestnut.  He didn't distinguish between horse chestnut and sweet chestnut - the former we would agree is a lousy firewood, but the latter is very good, with an excellent thermal content, albeit that it spits badly.  In fact firewood vendors here have to get you to sign a confirmation that you have a closed fire in order to sell it to you.  We have a woodburner insert and it is wonderful in that.

Poplar is something else we disagree on.  The book said that it was slow to burn and difficult to light - here we tend to regard it as kindling, or something to use if you need a short, quick, intense burn.

The book allows for a one year seasoning period.  I would say that if you are felling living trees, then they need a good 2 to 3 years depending on the tanin in the wood.  If the tree is long dead when you felled it and isn't a pine, then the wood really just needs to dry out a bit in order to burn.  Pine is a problem due to the amount of resin in the wood - the dead pine we felled in the One Acre Wood is useless for burning indoors but is lovely in the chiminea, as it is full of resin which would bung up the chimney, but smells lovely outdoors.  Live branches that fall in gales should still be left for a couple of years, as they were green when they came down.

The oak tree we had to fell at a work site shown below will not be ready to burn until the winter of 2012/13 at the very earliest.  The haze in the picture is not camera wobble by the way, it is pollen.  The tree was felled to make way for a swimming pool, but we didn't get the order until late spring.  It was about 200 years old, but the usable trunk section (for construction) was disappointingly short (12 feet) as the tree had not been managed.

Must get better photos!

So it's like this:

• two weeks ago we had the final stages of the masonry project at the back of the house to deal with, plus next door's new kitten
• last week I was tearing round the UK trying to earn an honest crust
• this week I have to catch up with all teh work that didn't get done last week as I was tearing around the UK

All of this impinges on two things, my ability to sort out photos and my ability to find nice ones to adorn this blog, or even to write something for this blog or my other one.

So in order to prove I still exist, and in a vain attempt to spur myself into finding something better jolly quickly, I put in the photo below.

It was taken on a friend's Blackberry and quite late in the evening, hence the grainy quality, on Easter Sunday when the really rather good Dutch band, Forty Fingers, were playing a gig outside the Excaliber Pub in our village.  The picture is of my frind Kathy and myself with a pair of pigs ears Kathy had brought over for me from their small haolding - I am a fan of eating pigs ears.  But by the time this was taken, we had both had a couple of Stellas....

French Comic Films

The theme for the Comice at Pontigne was Comic Films, and this was reflected in the grand procession of floats on the Sunday afternoon.  How many of these great works have you heard of, let alone seen?  And let's be clear - some of these are the biggest grossing films in France of all time!

The procession always starts with what they call the Ambassadrices - we would say carnival queens - and the Cadets de Baugeois - be glad there is no sound.

Next came le Vieil Bauge as we will be hosting the Comice next year.  Our chosen film was Les Bronzes font du Ski - about a bunch of middle aged swingers who go on Club Med holidays together, this time skiing.  I think there are four or five in the series, most of which were huge at the box office.

Vaulandry were next, and I never really got to see anywhere on their float the name of the film, but from the float I would imagine it was Les Enfants du Marais with Jacques Villeret - actually a very nice little film, but the frog fishing scenes were the best.  In some ways this procession was an hommage to Jacques Villeret and Louis de Funes, of whom more later.

Fougere decided to look more to Hollywood and Walt Disney and did a fine representation of Herbie - although they don't actually call him Herbie over here.

Following them, were Bauge with the first of the Louis de Funes films - le Gendarme de St Tropez.  Louis was kind of the French Norman Wisdom, but funny.

Next up, Le Guedeniau with another Louis de Funes film that is currently also doing the rounds as a musical - so they very bravely stopped every 50 metres and did a dance - Rabbi Jakob - and yes, they are all dressed up as Jews.

Next two pictures of the two floats of Chevire le Rouge, which we were fairly convinced were depicting the Frank Dubosc film Camping (top of the summer box office here 3 years ago - Frank is French Canadian and deeply worrying).

Then Boce - one of the smaller communes - who put on a fine display with another Louis de Funes film, La Grande Vadrouille.  I gather it was hugely popular in its time and is often shown on French TV.  The bloke who seems to be holding a pumpkin in his hand, is actually holding a water bomb made to look like a pumpkin - he was a very good shot, but it was so hot, no one minded.

Clefs came next with the biggest grossing French film of all time, and indeed the film that had the most ever cinema entrances in France of any film.  It is called Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, starred Danny Boon and came out in 2008.

If you have ever taken the fast road between Saumur and La Fleche, you will have passed through Cuon.  This year they came up with a film Le Petit Baigneur - another Louis de Funes film from 1968 and not one I have heard of at all, but a rather sweet float.

St Martin d'Arce was next in line.  They did Asterix and Obelix in fine style - but personally I prefer the books to the films.  We all cheered until we realised we were about to get "magic potion" thrown at us, which seemed to be dirty dish water (I hope it wasn't).

Then St Quentin les Beaurepaires - a tiny village off the main road - which did what I am told is a great French classic - Le Pere Noel est un Ordure.  I never think it wise to mock Father Christmas - you never know, as I saw him finishing his rounds one Christmas morning at Fontain Guerin!

Montpollin had several outriders before the main float turned up as they portrayed the film Mais ou est donc passe la 7eme Compagnie?  The French do a fine line in comedy films about the war.

Chartrene is the smallest commune in the Department - only about 50 registered voters and a few more people than that (mostly British).  They did another Louis de Funes film, but by this stage, my knowledge of these is totally exhausted (though no one did the Fantomas sequence - happily).

Echimire decided to take on the Jean Reno films - Les Visiteurs - about a rather tetchy medieval knight who gets sent forward in time, and doesn't much enjoy it.  I believe his catch phrase in the films was C'est dingue! - it's crazy!

Finally Pontigne brought up the rear, in place of honour with the finest and most highly regarded of all French Comic Films - even more than M Hulot's Holiday - La Soupe au Chou - about a couple of old peasants who make a wicked cabbage soup.  The disturbed digestion they get from this makes them fart a lot, which turns out to be an inter-galactic greeting and brings them Denree, who comes in search of cabbage soup, and brings gifts in return.  Denree is played by Jacques Villeret in an early role.  It cannot be called high art, but does epitomise French films - Truffaut was an abberation.

More from the Comice at Pontigne 2009

I couldn't leave it with just the photo from the dress rehearsal, so here are the Vieil Bauge Transylvanians doing the Time Warp, and at that moment we were keeping our knees in tight!

Once we had done all that fun stuff, the competitive inter-villages games were a pretty serious bout of tug-of-war.  We were outsized by most villages, and puffed from doing the dancing and quick changes behind a caravan.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

After all that fun on the Saturday, we were tired on the Sunday so went over to the Comice and sat in the shade and admired the scenery - Pontigne has a fine twisted spire as well!

However when the time came we had to go to the field entrance and greet the Vieil Bauge float.  The theme was comic films - I'm sure every British viewer of this blog will know Les Bronzes font du Ski intimately!  I will do another post on real comic French films shortly, once I am back from the UK.

The Vieil Bauge website has more photos if you are interested - follow this link here!

Comice at Pontigne - part 1 - the dance

If it is August, it must be Comice time here in the Baugeois.  Last year was Chartrene, this year it was down to Pontigne to arrange it all, next year it is our turn - help!

Last year, with some young friends, we sang and danced the Windmill in Old Amsterdam - following the theme of fables and stories.  This year's theme was comic films, and as I was given the job of deciding what we would do and setting it all up, they had to put up with an English language film - the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  While much of it would be unsuitable for young, old, horses and cattle, the Time Warp sequence is a good ensemble piece and this year, I also had lots of volunteers.

We have been rehearsing in our garden for the past five weeks, and Saturday afternoon was the performance.  The stage had no shade at all, and we were all in black - I was even wearing a wool dinner jacket - and the shade temperature was 32 degrees by the time it was down to us to open the dance proceedings, so I could really have done without having to do an interview with the compere before we got started.  I am waiting to see one of the videos that was done, but we got a lot of applause and it felt right.

The tug of war that we also had to do that afternoon in the baking heat was a complete disaster - I will say no more about that.  I will do other posts about the decorated floats on the Sunday, but leave you with a photograph from the dress rehearsal last Friday, showing my fabulous troupe of dancers in their finest Transylvanian apparel.